Spires and Sanctuaries, character development

Spires and Sanctuaries, a non-demoninational role-playing game
When creating a new Member, pick an age, gender, race, educational attainment, income level, and religious background. Members start with 25 experience points to distribute across Church Member Qualities (CMQs): organizational skill, religious fervor, pastoral care and concern, musical ability, generosity, teaching ability. Members gain general experience points by participating in regular Church Activities and specialized experience points by participating in Special Activities. For example, taking the "Spiritual Journeys" Special Activity gains two religious fervor points and one general point to be assigned by the Member.

Spires and Sanctuaries is a game that encourages collaboration, and many types of Church Activities require multiple Members with strong skills (high CMQs) in various areas to operate. A "Non-demoninational Winter Holidays Pageant" requires a number of Members with strong organizational skill, 1-3 Members will extremely high musical ability quotients, one Member with a high musical ability and teaching ability quotient and a large number of Members with at least 10 generosity points.

The game master, or Minister, can award bonus points at any time to Members who make creative or kind contributions to an Activity. Members are expected to act during an Activity in character with their point levels, i.e., a Member with low organizational skill and high generosity shouldn't be capable of organizing a successful Fundraising Campaign without assistance. The Minister can take a Member aside for "counseling" at any time to help keep Members in character.

Yesterday's run destination: estate sale at 24th and Alta

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola
brunch: banana smoothie
lunch: ?
dinner: french fries and korean beef taco

Where's your nose?

I'm not exactly sure why playing "Where's your nose?" is so much fun, for both me and my daughter. But it is. "Where's your belly button?" isn't bad, either.

Yesterday's run destination: Yahoo Center

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola
lunch: grilled cheese
dinner: beans and spinach
bonus: popovers at bedtime!

A lovely visit to the California Heritage Museum

I like historic houses. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a sucker for them, but having worked as a historic house tour guide, they have a special place in my heart. My thanks, and my sympathies, go out to the docents and staff who run historic house tours, as they answer questions, go into their canned spiels, when they can remember the details, show people their favorite chairs, or wainscotting, or whathaveyou, mix up dates, names, locations, and generally make history come alive, not least for having lived through some of it, in some older docents' cases, a whole lot of it. As I recall, a typical historic house has at some point been studied, renovated, and decorated according to a finely tuned sense of history, under the direction of a curator or professor with a specialization in a relevant period of American history. The house opens to the public, the curator or professor's colleagues come in for the opening ceremonies, ooh and ahh over a pair of 17th century cast iron andirons or ask after where she found a woodworker to reconstruct the molding, and generally show off their own knowledge of the period the house has been decorated to. Then all the experts go back to where ever they came from and the place opens to the public. Signage has not been installed. Docents have been given, at most, a quick tour by the expert and an idiosyncratically filled three ring binder of photocopies of photocopies of study photos taken of objects that may or may not have been placed in the house, or as it is now known, in the exhibit. From this information, and whatever they can find by googling "historic house [enter period here] [enter region here]", the docents, volunteers, interns, and (under)experienced and  (under)paid staff create a haze of facts, stories, myths, and garbled half-remembered oft repeated research to foist on the occasional visitor. It turns out it is possible to play a game of Telephone by one's self, as conjectures are repeated until believed and delivered as facts and facts morph, get rearranged, and shimmy to fit the interpreter's preferred story. For the rare visitor that asks a question and is given anything more than a off-the-top-of-my-head guess answer, the interpreter may go back to that three ring binder. Or google it.

Yesterday's run destination: cloverleaf around the intersection of Yale and Arizona

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: granola and banana
lunch: cheesy mashed potatoes
dinner: pesto pasta and bean salad

Roast Chicken for two

I don't roast whole chickens anymore, having discovered the joys of supermarket rotisserie chicken, which is great served as is, as a source of cooked meat for other dishes (chili, salad, etc.) and for the cleanest, easiest chicken stock ever (since most of the fat has rendered out during roasting, the remaining bones and skin make great tasting stock without the need of defatting). For the most part, the whole birds I can get in the market are way too big for the cooking-for-two-and-a-half that I'm used to. But I do like working my own flavors into chicken dishes and have compromised by roasting whole chicken breasts. Sort of. Mostly. My current recipe is as follows:

Roast Chicken Breast
1 whole bone-in chicken breast, 1-2 lbs.
a few sprigs of fresh herb, such as parsley, oregano, marjoram
1 t. olive oil or butter
1 medium onion
1/2 lemon, cut along the long axis
salt

Preheat oven to 375. Preheat small ovenproof frying pan on stove with oil or butter. Rinse and pat dry the chicken. Stick the herb under the skin, having opened a pocket between skin and meat with your fingers or a chopstick. Fry chicken skin side down over medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes or until nicely browned. While browning, chop the onion. Remove chicken and in rendered chicken fat and oil/butter soften onion. Salt to taste. Place lemon half in the middle of the pan, on top of the onion, and place chicken, rib side down, over the lemon. Bake 15-20 minutes or until juices run clear.

The onion base will come out rich and caramelized and is delicious as is over potatoes or rice, or can be used as the base for gravy.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: biscuits from our neighbors
lunch: leftover salad, crepes
dinner: cheesy potato, hot dogs, frozen peas, yum

Family Journal

Here are some of the words Miriam (age 16 months) knows how to say(and English translations):
cook (cookie)
fwa (fly, as in, the toy bird flies)
bye-o (bye)
haai (hi)
hhhhaaw (cat)
oouff (dog)
ba (bird) (ball) (bath) (bed)
dak dak dak dak (duck)
tee (tree)

She nods politely when asked if she has gone to the park, whether she has or not. She points to the "yellow circle" in the book, can match shapes to put square shaped pegs in square shaped holes, turns puzzle pieces (the kind where there's one piece per animal) to fit, blows into a whistle, murrs when she wants something, celebrates accomplishing a task with a high pitched "hrmm!" noise for "all done" that Julia Child might say if she lost the power of the spoken word, claps, but not rhythmically. She likes putting the shoes away, cookies, smiling when others are smiling, finding her belly button, Sophie cat, pointing, reading in her reading corner, and lining up her two dozen odd small plastic animals on their feet. She does not like when her parents leave, even for a moment, getting diaper changed, sometimes, going down the slide sitting up (but on her belly is increasingly fun), flying in airplanes, getting vitamins, or when too many new people are around. She (sometimes) understands that only some her small plastic animals can fly, the ones with wings, even the penguins. Once she lined up all of the quadrupeds separate from the other animals. I was so proud, my heart exploded a little bit.

Yesterday's run destination: the supermarket

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: ceral
lunch: chicken marbella, orzo salad, spinach salad, cherry walnut brownies
dinner: leftovers from lunch

Sleep like a fire

Sometimes getting the baby to sleep is like kindling a fire. After collecting all of the tools, setting the mise en place so that everything I might need is at hand, I try to cajol a gentle flame from the lightest of kindling. Watching carefully, seeing what direction things might go, ready to bounce around to the other side, listening, watching, breathing with her breath. Then once it is started, an added watchfulness, wariness, as if this newfound thing might snuff out at any moment and I'm back to square one. Until, truly caught and solidly set, I can breathe my own breath, sit back, take pride in a thing well done, and move on.

Yesterday's run destination: sprint around the block

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: eggs
lunch: japanese curry
dinner: chili

Solid mud

Out on the trails in Topanga State Park, those ridiculously well maintained trails of wide cuts, switchbacks, signposts at every junction, we had a nice hike this morning before the rains came. Stayed up on the ridges, surrounded by green green shrubs and chaparral soaking up the last three weeks of early rains. The trail was dry, yellow orange mud resolidified around raw and broken rocks, shaped up in ridges and bumps, smoothed and temporary, formed until the next heavy rain.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: currant scones
lunch: hotdogs and hamburgers
dinner: pulled pork and greens at Sarah's. And walnut fudge